John Scalzi: Redshirts
Dec. 14th, 2012 12:24 amScalzi's Redshirts is his homage to the "have Kirk, Spock, McCoy and someone else on an away team, and have the last guy die to show how dangerous it is" idea spawned by StarTrek.
On the one hand, it suffers from driving the joke into the ground in some places. On the other hand, it does a reasonable job at taking the premise and building a decent novel out of it. On the third hand, it doesn't explore the premise as far as I'd have liked. On the gripping hand, it looks at it more than most other novels I've read.
In fact, come to think of it, if one already knows the general theme, I might enjoy it a lot more if you skip the prologue (which establishes the "redshirts" theme, but drives the joke into the ground) and start with chapter 1, and get a natural unfolding of "this is a normal introduction to some characters" before becoming "hang on, has anyone else noticed something about these away missions...?" slowly.
On the one hand, it suffers from driving the joke into the ground in some places. On the other hand, it does a reasonable job at taking the premise and building a decent novel out of it. On the third hand, it doesn't explore the premise as far as I'd have liked. On the gripping hand, it looks at it more than most other novels I've read.
In fact, come to think of it, if one already knows the general theme, I might enjoy it a lot more if you skip the prologue (which establishes the "redshirts" theme, but drives the joke into the ground) and start with chapter 1, and get a natural unfolding of "this is a normal introduction to some characters" before becoming "hang on, has anyone else noticed something about these away missions...?" slowly.